PLCs for Beginners. An introductory guide to building robust PLC programs with Structured Text

M. T. White

With the rise of smart factories and advanced technology, the demand for PLC programmers with expertise beyond ladder logic is surging. Written by M.T. White, a seasoned DevOps engineer and adjunct CIS instructor, this guide offers insights from the author’s extensive experience in PLC and HMI programming across industries. This book introduces a fresh approach to PLC programming, preparing you for future automation challenges through computer science and text-based programming.Starting with the basic components of PLCs and their integration with other modules, this book gives you a clear understanding of system functionality and helps you master PLC program execution by learning about flow and essential components for effective programming. You'll understand program design with pseudocode and flowcharts, vital for planning programs, and cover Boolean logic intricacies, harnessing logical functions and truth tables for precise control statements. The book gives you a comprehensive grasp of Structured Text, its syntax and features crucial for efficient programming. The book also focuses on advanced topics like cybersecurity in PLC systems and leveraging generative AI (GenAI), such as ChatGPT, to enhance productivity.By the end of this book, you’ll be able to design real-world projects using pseudocode and flowcharts, and implement those designs in Structured Text.

Learn Power BI. A comprehensive, step-by-step guide for beginners to learn real-world business intelligence - Second Edition

Greg Deckler

To succeed in today's transforming business world, organizations need business intelligence capabilities to make smarter decisions faster than ever before. This updated second edition of Learn Power BI takes you on a journey of data exploration and discovery, using Microsoft Power BI to ingest, cleanse, and organize data in order to unlock key business insights that can then be shared with others.This newly revised and expanded edition of Learn Power BI covers all of the latest features and interface changes and takes you through the fundamentals of business intelligence projects, how to deploy, adopt, and govern Power BI within your organization, and how to leverage your knowledge in the marketplace and broader ecosystem that is Power BI. As you progress, you will learn how to ingest, cleanse, and transform your data into stunning visualizations, reports, and dashboards that speak to business decision-makers.By the end of this Power BI book, you will be fully prepared to be the data analysis hero of your organization – or even start a new career as a business intelligence professional.

Mastering Linux Administration. Take your sysadmin skills to the next level by configuring and maintaining Linux systems - Second Edition

Alexandru Calcatinge, Julian Balog

Harness the power of Linux in modern data center management, leveraging its unparalleled versatility for efficiently managing your workloads in on-premises and cloud environments. In this second edition, you'll find updates on the latest advancements in Linux administration including containerization, shell scripting, and hypervisors. Written by an experienced Linux trainer, this book will start you off with Linux installation on on-premises systems. As you progress, you’ll master the Linux command line, files, packages, and filesystems. You'll explore essential Linux commands and techniques to secure your Linux environment. New to this edition is a chapter on shell scripting, providing structured guidance on using shell programming for basic Linux automation. This book also delves into the world of containers, with two new chapters dedicated to Docker containers and hypervisors, including KVM virtual machines. Once adept with Linux containers, you'll learn about modern cloud technologies, managing and provisioning container workloads using Kubernetes, and automating system tasks using Ansible. Finally, you'll get to grips with deploying Linux to the cloud using AWS and Azure-specific tools. By the end of this Linux book, you'll have mastered everyday administrative tasks, seamlessly navigating workflows spanning from on-premises to the cloud.

Malware Development for Ethical Hackers. Learn how to develop various types of malware to strengthen cybersecurity

Zhassulan Zhussupov

Malware Development for Ethical Hackers is a comprehensive guide to the dark side of cybersecurity within an ethical context.This book takes you on a journey through the intricate world of malware development, shedding light on the techniques and strategies employed by cybercriminals. As you progress, you’ll focus on the ethical considerations that ethical hackers must uphold. You’ll also gain practical experience in creating and implementing popular techniques encountered in real-world malicious applications, such as Carbanak, Carberp, Stuxnet, Conti, Babuk, and BlackCat ransomware. This book will also equip you with the knowledge and skills you need to understand and effectively combat malicious software.By the end of this book, you'll know the secrets behind malware development, having explored the intricate details of programming, evasion techniques, persistence mechanisms, and more.

Microsoft Power BI Performance Best Practices. Learn practical techniques for building high-speed Power BI solutions - Second Edition

Thomas LeBlanc, Bhavik Merchant, Kenneth Neal

In a world dominated by data, organizations heavily rely on business intelligence tools like Power BI for deriving insights and informed decision-making. Yet, as data volumes grow and user demands increase, achieving optimal performance becomes challenging. Author Thomas LeBlanc, a seasoned Business Intelligence Architect with over 30 years of IT experience, draws on his extensive expertise to guide you in overcoming challenges related to slow performance, data modeling, query optimization, visualization design, deployment, administration, integration, compliance, and security.This book covers topics ranging from architecture and data modeling to Power BI premium features, DAX formulas, and collaboration, helping you to gain a deep understanding of the Power BI architecture, design efficient data models, create efficient queries, and improve visualization performance. You’ll also learn best practices to deploy and manage Power BI solutions, integrate with other tools and systems, ensure compliance and security, and collaborate with team members.By the end of the book, you’ll have developed your knowledge and skills to design, build, and maintain high-performing, scalable, and efficient Power BI solutions to drive unparalleled business success.

Adversarial AI Attacks, Mitigations, and Defense Strategies. A cybersecurity professional's guide to AI attacks, threat modeling, and securing AI with MLSecOps

John Sotiropoulos

Adversarial attacks trick AI systems with malicious data, creating new security risks by exploiting how AI learns. This challenges cybersecurity as it forces us to defend against a whole new kind of threat. This book demystifies adversarial attacks and equips you with the skills to secure AI technologies, moving beyond research hype or business-as-usual activities.This strategy-based book is a comprehensive guide to AI security, presenting you with a structured approach with practical examples to identify and counter adversarial attacks. In Part 1, you’ll touch on getting started with AI and learn about adversarial attacks, before Parts 2, 3 and 4 move through different adversarial attack methods, exploring how each type of attack is performed and how you can defend your AI system against it. Part 5 is dedicated to introducing secure-by-design AI strategy, including threat modeling and MLSecOps and consolidating recent research, industry standards and taxonomies such as OWASP and NIST. Finally, based on the classic NIST pillars, the book provides a blueprint for maturing enterprise AI security, discussing the role of AI security in safety and ethics as part of Trustworthy AI.By the end of this book, you’ll be able to develop, deploy, and secure AI systems against the threat of adversarial attacks effectively.

3D Printing with Fusion 360. Design for additive manufacturing, and level up your simulation and print preparation skills

Sualp Ozel

As 3D printing gains traction, the demand for CAD experts in manufacturing grows. If you're a fan of Autodesk Fusion and crave hands-on experience with automated modeling, generative design, and the full potential of additive manufacturing, this book is your guide to elevating your design and 3D printing skills.In this book, you’ll learn how to open CAD or Mesh files in Fusion and expertly repair, edit, and prepare them for 3D printing. You’ll unlock the secrets of effective print preparation, learning about print settings, support structures, and part orientation. This book also highlights Fusion’s diverse preferences designed specifically for additive manufacturing.Subsequent chapters will guide you in choosing the right part orientation and position, as well as creating suitable support structures based on your chosen printing technology. You’ll simulate the printing process to detect and remedy common print failures associated with the metal powder bed fusion process. Finally, you’ll leverage templates and scripts to automate routine tasks around print preparation.By the end of this 3D printing book, you'll be armed with the knowledge and skills necessary to harness the power of Fusion for additive manufacturing, meeting the growing demand with confidence.

Microsoft Power Pages in Action. Accelerate your low-code journey with functional-rich web apps using Power Pages

Faisal Hussona

Microsoft Power Apps Pages in Action is a comprehensive beginner's guide for effortlessly building and customizing functional-rich web apps. Packed with real-world examples, it offers a practical understanding of the Power Pages environment.You’ll understand web pages by creating data tables and forms, progress to adding web pages, and delve into advanced techniques for seamlessly integrating web apps. Now, you’ll learn how to create responsive web pages, automate web apps, and use ChatGPT-assisted coding with code snippets for common requirements or needs. As you progress, you'll be guided on crafting portals and websites, encompassing the utilization of various functionalities and layouts. Progressively, you’ll discover how to seamlessly integrate them into your web pages across multiple Microsoft technologies, including Dataverse and Power Automate. Towards the end, you'll also learn how to implement cloud flows to provide access to external services and use cloud flows to provide user experiences running processes off the page.By the end of the book, you’ll have a solid understanding of Power Pages and be able to create web applications tailored to your unique needs.

Soar with Haskell. The ultimate beginners' guide to mastering functional programming from the ground up

Tom Schrijvers

With software systems reaching new levels of complexity and programmers aiming for the highest productivity levels, software developers and language designers are turning toward functional programming because of its powerful and mature abstraction mechanisms. This book will help you tap into this approach with Haskell, the programming language that has been leading the way in pure functional programming for over three decades.The book begins by helping you get to grips with basic functions and algebraic datatypes, and gradually adds abstraction mechanisms and other powerful language features. Next, you’ll explore recursion, formulate higher-order functions as reusable templates, and get the job done with laziness. As you advance, you’ll learn how Haskell reconciliates its purity with the practical need for side effects and comes out stronger with a rich hierarchy of abstractions, such as functors, applicative functors, and monads. Finally, you’ll understand how all these elements are combined in the design and implementation of custom domain-specific languages for tackling practical problems such as parsing, as well as the revolutionary functional technique of property-based testing.By the end of this book, you’ll have mastered the key concepts of functional programming and be able to develop idiomatic Haskell solutions.

Practical Hardware Pentesting. Learn attack and defense techniques for embedded systems in IoT and other devices - Second Edition

Jean-Georges Valle

Practical Hardware Pentesting, Second Edition, is an example-driven guide that will help you plan attacks, hack your embedded devices, and secure the hardware infrastructure.Throughout the book, you’ll explore the functional and security aspects of a device and learn how a system senses and communicates with the outside world. You’ll set up a lab from scratch and gradually work towards an advanced hardware lab.The first part of this book will get you attacking the software of an embedded device. This will get you thinking from an attacker point of view; you’ll understand how devices are attacked, compromised, and how you can harden a device against the most common hardware attack vectors. As you progress, you’ll get to grips with the global architecture of an embedded system and sniff on-board traffic, learn how to identify and formalize threats to the embedded system, and understand its relationship with its ecosystem. This 2nd Edition covers real-world examples featuring various devices like smart TVs, baby monitors, or pacemakers, you’ll discover how to analyze hardware and locate its possible vulnerabilities before going on to explore firmware dumping, analysis, and exploitation.By the end of this book, you’ll and understand how to implement best practices to secure your hardware.

CI/CD Design Patterns. Design and implement CI/CD using proven design patterns

Garima Bajpai, Michel Schildmeijer, Muktesh Mishra, Pawel Piwosz, ...

The fast-changing world of software development demands robust CI/CD solutions that go beyond traditional methods to address the complexities of modern pipelines. This practical guide presents proven design patterns to streamline your CI/CD processes, tackling pain points often overlooked by other resources. This book introduces continuous delivery design patterns to help practitioners and engineering teams design, adopt, and implement CI/CD. Drawing from decades of combined industry experience, the expert author team—including DevOps and cloud leader Garima Bajpai, industry expert Michel Schildmeijer, CI/CD framework creator Pawel Piwosz, and open source advocate Muktesh Mishra—provides invaluable insights from leading voices in the industry.The book lays a solid foundation by starting with the importance of CI/CD design patterns, components, and principles. You’ll learn strategies for scaling CI/CD with a focus on performance, security, measurements, and pipeline auditability, along with infrastructure and release automation. The book also covers advanced design patterns that integrate machine learning, generative AI, and near real-time CI/CD processes.By the end of this book, you’ll have a deep understanding of continuous delivery design patterns, a solid foundation for audits and controls, and be able to mitigate risks associated with the rapid integration of modern technology into the SDLC.

GraphQL Best Practices. Gain hands-on experience with schema design, security, and error handling

Artur Czemiel

In the ever-evolving landscape of web development, GraphQL has emerged as a powerful query language that addresses the limitations of traditional REST APIs. This guide delves deep into GraphQL, starting with its foundational principles and swiftly advancing to complex topics that will equip you with the skills you need to understand this technology.As you progress, you’ll cover advanced concepts such as schema design, security enhancements, and error handling. You'll also explore essential topics such as federation and the transition from REST to GraphQL, gaining a comprehensive understanding of these critical areas. The book helps you learn through practical examples in TypeScript, guiding you through building scalable and secure GraphQL backends. Additionally, you’ll get up to speed with the intricacies of frontend integration.By the end of this book, you’ll have the skills you need to implement real-world GraphQL solutions, creating efficient and robust applications that meet modern web development demands.

Python Machine Learning By Example. Unlock machine learning best practices with real-world use cases - Fourth Edition

Yuxi (Hayden) Liu

The fourth edition of Python Machine Learning By Example is a comprehensive guide for beginners and experienced machine learning practitioners who want to learn more advanced techniques, such as multimodal modeling. Written by experienced machine learning author and ex-Google machine learning engineer Yuxi (Hayden) Liu, this edition emphasizes best practices, providing invaluable insights for machine learning engineers, data scientists, and analysts.Explore advanced techniques, including two new chapters on natural language processing transformers with BERT and GPT, and multimodal computer vision models with PyTorch and Hugging Face. You’ll learn key modeling techniques using practical examples, such as predicting stock prices and creating an image search engine.This hands-on machine learning book navigates through complex challenges, bridging the gap between theoretical understanding and practical application. Elevate your machine learning and deep learning expertise, tackle intricate problems, and unlock the potential of advanced techniques in machine learning with this authoritative guide.

The Definitive Guide to Data Integration. Unlock the power of data integration to efficiently manage, transform, and analyze data

Pierre-Yves BONNEFOY, Emeric CHAIZE, Raphaël MANSUY, Mehdi TAZI, ...

The Definitive Guide to Data Integration is an indispensable resource for navigating the complexities of modern data integration. Focusing on the latest tools, techniques, and best practices, this guide helps you master data integration and unleash the full potential of your data.This comprehensive guide begins by examining the challenges and key concepts of data integration, such as managing huge volumes of data and dealing with the different data types. You’ll gain a deep understanding of the modern data stack and its architecture, as well as the pivotal role of open-source technologies in shaping the data landscape. Delving into the layers of the modern data stack, you’ll cover data sources, types, storage, integration techniques, transformation, and processing. The book also offers insights into data exposition and APIs, ingestion and storage strategies, data preparation and analysis, workflow management, monitoring, data quality, and governance. Packed with practical use cases, real-world examples, and a glimpse into the future of data integration, The Definitive Guide to Data Integration is an essential resource for data eclectics.By the end of this book, you’ll have the gained the knowledge and skills needed to optimize your data usage and excel in the ever-evolving world of data.

Generating Creative Images With DALL-E 3. Create accurate images with effective prompting for real-world applications

Holly Picano

Unveil the extraordinary capabilities of the groundbreaking AI model, DALL-E 3, as it transforms text prompts into accurate images. This book addresses the challenge of creating meaningful images by writing prompts, guiding you step by step through creating stunning visual art regardless of your skill level.Prepare to delve deep into the inner workings of DALL-E 3's architecture and training process. With clear explanations, practical tutorials, and real-world examples that can be easily applied, you’ll unlock secrets to creating awe-inspiring AI-generated art, from fine art prints to digital designs. This book provides comprehensive insights into various lens options, camera angles, lighting techniques, and art movements, helping you integrate AI capabilities with your artistic skills. You’ll also learn to create NFTs that can be monetized and gain invaluable insights into designing compelling covers, all within the ethical boundaries of AI-generated art. And with the invaluable prompt cheat sheet by your side, you’ll hone your skills in formulating captivating prompts for diverse purposes.By the end of this book, you’ll have learned how to produce generative AI art at a rapid pace and relatively low cost and push the boundaries of imagination with DALL-E 3.

Game Development Patterns with Godot 4. Create resilient game systems using industry-standard solutions in Godot

Henrique Campos

Game development demands more than just creativity; it requires code that’s as dynamic and adaptable as the games you dream of creating. Seasoned Godot developer, educator and creator of popular resources like The Essential Guide to Creating Multiplayer Games with Godot 4.0, Henrique Campos introduces you to object-oriented programming design patterns, offering time-tested, reliable solutions to common coding issues. With these patterns, you’ll not only build scalable, maintainable architectures for your games but also gain the confidence to tackle real-world development challenges head-on with Godot's built-in features.In this hands-on guide, you’ll step into the role of a game mechanics engineer tasked with implementing requests from a fictional game designer, simulating the collaborative nature of real-world game development. Using Godot 4.3, you’ll develop a complete platformer game featuring a playable character, enemies with advanced AI, interactive objects, multiple levels, music, and more. Along the way, you’ll master core programming concepts such as SOLID principles, favor composition over inheritance, and have a solid understanding of object-oriented programming along with the principles behind the design patterns.By the end of the book, you’ll be able to diagnose and fix pathologies in your code with ease.